Structure de l’expression du déplacement en français: Relation gestualité-langage, comparaison interlinguistique et perspective développementale

Résumé En

It has been known for a while that French is predominantly a verb-framed language, in whichMotion is encoded differently from satellite-framed languages, and this difference is apparentin the content and structure of the verbal expression of Motion (Talmy 1985).During the last decade, a number of studies have focused on A) the gestural expression ofMotion produced by adult speakers of different languages (e.g. McNeil & Duncan 2000;Özyürek et al. 2005), and B) the development of the gestural expression of Motion frominfancy to adulthood (e.g. Gullberg, Hickmann, & Hendriks 2008; Özyürek et al. 2008).There are at least three reasons for the interest in gesture in the domain of Motion expression.First, expression is considered as a multimodal phenomenon realized through different tools -not only speech, but also behaviour, facial expressions or hand gestures. Second, the imagisticnature of gestures makes them a great tool to represent Motion (e.g. a raised handrepresenting an upward movement or wriggling fingers showing a running movement). Third,co-verbal gesture is a very frequent behaviour that semantically and pragmatically coordinateswith speech but can also A) display speakers’ mental contents and intentions that are notnecessarily verbalized or B) emphasize those elements of verbalized contents that are actuallythe core ideas of speakers’ intentions (Kendon 2004; McNeill 1992).A cross-linguistic perspective is crucial in order to distinguish language-specific features ofgesture from its universal properties. A developmental perspective helps to gain insight intothe acquisition of adult-like (language specific or universal) patterns of gesturing.The most recent studies have shown that despite differences found in verbally conveyedcontent, speakers of verb-framed languages and speakers of satellite-framed languages share apreference for gesturing about Path only, and this is true at all the ages observed (e.g.Fibigerová, Guidetti, & Šulová 2012; Hickmann, Hendriks, & Gullberg 2011).This chapter will focus on the comparison of verbal and gestural structure. Do Frenchspeakers, in accordance with their typical verbal pattern, separate Path elements and Mannerelements into two different gestures rather than include them in a single gesture? A fewstudies have addressed this issue but their results are not conclusive. Our study offers a moresubtle definition of “structure” that consists in a distinction between 1) the number of gestures produced to express both Path and Manner, and 2) the complexity of individual gestureswithin a multi-gestural expression.The data were collected from typologically opposed French and Czech speakers – childrenaged 5 and 10 and adults – during narrations of short video-sketches that displayed salientMotion events.Although French participants needed more clauses in order to express both Path and Mannerthan Czech participants, this difference was not reflected in gesture. However, a slightdifference appeared in gesture when it came to the second variable: when more than onegesture was produced by participants, French speakers actually separated Path and Mannermore frequently than Czech speakers who included path and manner in at least one of theirmultiple gestures. In both language groups the frequency of multi-gestural descriptionsincreased with age but no age effect was found for the complexity of individual gestures in amulti-gestural expression. Details are discussed in the light of the language impact on gesturaland cognitive development.